In any case, the Wall that was believed to have saved the Iwate populace became a source of worship for them. Ao didn’t consider herself to be a very devout person, but touching the mammoth Wall did indeed feel like a kind of spiritual experience.
For the first two minutes of her prayer, she recalled memories she’d shared with her mother, and with the third, she thought of her daughter, who had turned three this year. Despite the lack of a father in her life, the child was growing quickly. Next year, Ao was likely to have the preparations finished for the 500,000 milliyen needed for the Suika chip implant. The winter air was too harsh for the little girl now, but someday, she’d probably come up here with Ao’s ashes. Just as Yokohama Station piled up higher over the years based on only memories and no greater purpose, so did the people who lived here pile up the generations without realizing where they were headed.
When the prayer was finished, she opened her eyes and promptly noticed that a boy was walking in her direction, alone, a great distance away.
He’s probably on his rite of passage, she thought initially. When local children reached age fifteen, they had to undergo a trial that involved going onto the roof in the winter, traveling to a particular spot to perform a Suika check, then returning. However, the person approaching her was obviously not fifteen. He was barely older than her three-year-old daughter, it seemed.
“Hello,” the boy called when he reached her, bowing his head politely.
Ao returned the gesture. “Hello.”
“Pardon me. I came over because I was certain you were in a bad mood,” the boy said, quite eloquently. He didn’t speak like a kid. On a closer inspection, his face was not childlike, despite his size. Many unfamiliar bits of machinery lined his belt.
“Were you in the middle of prayer?” the boy inquired, looking at the container at Ao’s feet.
“Yes. This is my mother’s funeral.”
Ao picked up the container and turned toward the escalator hole in the Wall. The Wall was almost entirely featureless concrete, except for a small opening in one particular spot, inside of which was a rising escalator.
The black container held a plastic bag with the remains of Ao’s mother. She placed it into the hole. The ordinarily silent escalator jerked into motion and began to carry the ashes upward. The escalator tunnel had no lights inside, and the bag quickly vanished from sight.
“It’s over,” Ao stated.
The boy watched the little ritual with obvious interest. “Do you perform burials with this wall escalator here, in this area?”
“That’s right.”
“Where do the ashes go?”
“I don’t know. I suppose they come out on the other side and get washed into the sea.”
“I’ve seen some other places where people scatter remains in the ocean, too,” the boy responded. The Wall was one of the sacred sites of Yokohama Station, so there were occasional visitors from other parts who traveled to see it. There had never been a child who’d come in the middle of winter, however.
“Are you lost? Where are your mother and father?”
“I don’t have any.”
“Oh.” Ao immediately felt bad for having posed the question. She glanced at the sky and suggested, “The weather is ugly today, and it might snow after this. Do you understand what weather is? You see how the sky above is gray? Normally, it’s supposed to be blue, but water and ice come down from above when it turns that dark color. It’s dangerous, so you should go back home as soon as you can.”
“I know. It snows a lot where I’m from.”
“Do you live far away?”
“The place where I was born is very far away. Across the sea.”
“Across the sea?”
The gigantic Wall along the Iwate coast meant there was almost nowhere you could go to see the water. But Ao knew that on the other side was the Pacific Ocean, far vaster than Yokohama Station—it was effectively infinite in size. Nobody knew what might be on the other side. One of the children’s books Ao had bought for her daughter claimed there was a land of dreams out there.
Maybe the boy was an eccentric fantasizer who allowed himself to believe this, she thought.
“I’m looking for someone,” the boy stated, pulling a device from his pocket that displayed a picture. “Have you seen these two before?”
“Did you get separated from your friends?”
“No. We don’t know where they are anymore, so I’m searching for them on the company’s orders.”
Ao inspected the image. There were two small boys who possessed that same oddly grown-up look as this one. One of them wore a hood, and the other had short and unruly hair with a strange plastic sheen to it. That may have been a trick of the light, however.
“…Oh yes. I did see them. It was about half a month ago. There’s an automated turnstile factory near here, and they were wandering around there. Boys seem to love that sort of place, don’t they?”
“I see. Where is that factory?”
Ao pulled up a map of the Iwate area on her device and gave him a rough estimate of the location.
“Thank you. I’ll go there right away,” the boy declared, bowing again. He promptly walked off in the direction of the factory. His movements were unusually quick for the size of his body, and in moments, he was out of sight behind the curve of the Wall.
When Ao returned Inside and gave the rented coat back, she asked the old man at the exit if a boy around six years old had gone onto the roof today.
Without a change of expression, the man answered, “Nope, you’re the only one. Why would there be a child up there when it’s so cold? My grandson’s sitting at home playing games.”
Ao agreed with that sentiment. He had been a curious child.